Swedish furnishing major IKEA, part of the Ingka Group, is inviting its investment arm - Ingka Investments - to India, a senior company executive said during an interaction in New Delhi. The move suggests that the group is looking at India as a priority market. The areas of investments being considered by Ingka Investments could range from taking stake in companies across sectors such as renewables, recycling, real estate, and software which synergise with IKEA's broader retail requirements.
Reliance Jio has suggested an alternative plan to the The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) under which spectrum required by non-geostationary orbit satellite (NGSO) operators to run their gateway terminals should be auctioned geographically, based on districts, rather than circles as done for mobile services. For spectrum which would be required to connect user terminals (like individual homes), Jio has suggested it should be auctioned frequency-wise and exclusively to an operator at a pan-India level. The move is significant as the auctioning of satellite space spectrum has been vehemently opposed by low earth orbit satellite operators (satellites which circle at low altitudes of 200-2000 km).
India witnessed the highest increase in airfares among the 10 top aviation markets in the Asia-Pacific and West Asia collectively across both domestic and international flights Q4 2019 and Q4 2022 in nominal terms, according to research by Hong Kong-based Airports Council International (ACI). India, where fares went up by 41 per cent, was followed by the UAE (34 per cent), Singapore (30 (per cent) and Australia (23 per cent). The study, which was undertaken in collaboration with Flare Aviation Consulting, examined around 36,000 routes in the top 10 aviation markets in Asia-Pacific and West Asia.
E-commerce player Meesho, backed by marquee investors like SoftBank Group and Meta Platforms, will look at an initial public offering (IPO) only in 2025, and till then, its focus will be on generating profits after tax and not just on being Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation)-positive, top sources in the company told Business Standard in New Delhi. In a clear shift of strategy, the company, which has reduced its cash burn by 85 per cent, is now looking to trim its annual revenue growth target to 40 per cent from the 100-plus per cent earlier. The sources, however, said even this level of growth was far higher than that of most e-commerce companies.
The Indian government is keen to woo major semiconductor players, but a global race to attract them to countries where there is already an ecosystem is making it difficult for India to attract the biggies in the business. On Wednesday the government decided to throw open the doors to more players to participate in its semiconductor scheme. It is now looking at not only 28 nanometre (nm) chips and below, but higher nodes like 40 nm.
Apple is hoping to assemble in India 25 per cent of all iPhones produced globally to reduce its heavy dependence on China.
Their favourite alternatives: Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines. Note, India is missing from that list. And this is despite an attractive financial incentive scheme for OSAT players. The reason, said a senior executive of a US chip company who had a meeting in Taiwan just a few weeks ago, is that "they want more predictability in government policy because they plan to put in big money."
'I was in the US, where I met top executives of HP and Dell, and they are very keen to come to India.' 'Acer and ASUS have also evinced interest.'
The India personal computer (PC) market shipment, inclusive of desktops, notebooks, and workstations, dropped by an overall 30.1 per cent in the first quarter of CY2023 over the previous year, to only 2.99 million units, according to the latest data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker released on Tuesday. In Q1CY23, while the demand for desktops was positive, the notebook category witnessed another weak quarter as it declined by 40.8 per cent year-on-year (y-o-y). The consumer segment declined by 36.1 per cent y-o-y primarily due to slowing demand and weak market sentiment.
Senior Tesla executives including those from its supply chain are planning to come to India on Wednesday and Thursday for meetings with government officials, including those in the Prime Minister's Office, according to sources. Prashant R Menon, director of Tesla India, did not respond to a specific query on the meetings. Sources say that the executives are coming to see how they can expand and develop local sourcing of components from India for the Tesla car.
India's stiff labour laws were one key issue that Apple CEO Tim Cook discussed with Prime Minister Modi on his recent visit.
OSAT majors have concerns about India's ability to provide a stable, predictable, and lasting policy environment for years to come, which is key for making a decision in a capital-intensive business.
The government's ambitious vision document that aims at achieving electronics manufacturing with a value of $300 billion by FY26 (including exports of $105-130 billion) could end up far lower than the target, according to a reality check this month. The reality check came from the Indian Cellular and Electronics Association (ICEA), which partnered with the government in preparing the document. The members of the ICEA are mobile and electronics companies, and its assessment, based on current trends, indicates that the total electronics production in FY26 will be around $225 billion.
The government is close to approving a proposal by Micron Technology to set up an assembly, testing, marking and packaging (ATMP) facility in the country involving an investment of about $1 billion. The world's fifth largest semiconductor company, based in Idaho, USA, will use the facility to process some of its own wafers, manufactured across the globe.
'If the airlines are not given a clear deadline to change the altimeters by the DGCA, why should they do it voluntarily?' 'It means that the aircraft will be grounded for a while and lose money.'
Stung by the government's punitive action on electric two-wheelers, registrations in April fell by nearly a fourth to 62,581 from 82,292 in March, according to data from VAHAN. Electric two-wheeler companies, including Okinawa, Hero Electric, Ather Energy, and TVS, have all clocked their lowest registrations in the four months of this calendar year. Ola Electric has been the only exception to this bloodbath, and has crossed its March numbers, hitting 21,560 registrations in April, which is its highest in this calendar year. As a result, there have been some interesting changes in the electric two-wheeler pecking order.
Companies making electric two-wheelers, through their association Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles (SMEV), have taken on the Department of Heavy Industries (DHI), saying they did not get subsidies for even half the mandated 1 million units they manufactured. Subsidies are given under Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric Vehicles 2 (FAME II). In a petition to the parliamentary standing committee on industry energy and estimates, the SMEV said the department had done an "accounting error" by showing that it (the department) was close to achieving the mandated target by including sales of the EVs that were "not funded" under the scheme.
E-commerce players may soon rent out drones, so you can use them the way you book a cab on an app, and test viable use-cases for last-mile delivery.
The new mantra was to align Apple's ambition with the government's, focusing on Modi's favourite themes of Make in India, employment generation and India as a high-tech export hub.
In the run-up to Apple CEO Tim Cook's visit to India, government officials are finalising the talk points with the Cupertino-headquartered tech major. Officials said that the government would like Apple to "deepen" the company's engagement in the manufacturing and assembly of iPhones in the country and not limit itself only to the minimum commitments made under the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for mobile devices. The conversations between the two sides are likely to focus on that.
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